Sheena Patel photographed by Salam Zaied
(Picture: Salam Zaied / ES Magazine )What is it like to be obsessed with a person whom you have never met? Increasingly, it’s not such a far-fetched idea, with the many windows into the lives of others opened by social media. Sheena Patel, a 34-year-old from Wembley who works in television and film, has written a mesmerising debut novel about how seductive and toxic this can be. The protagonist of Patel’s book, I’m a Fan, is a nameless 30-year-old woman who works in the arts and lives in south London. She spends hours poring over the Instagram account of a woman she has never met. The woman she is obsessed with is rich, white and well-connected — all things the protagonist, who is constantly made aware of her brown skin, is not. And both women are sleeping with the same man: an artist. The protagonist started her relationship with him by sending him a fan letter.
I’m a Fan is a disturbing, direct and skilfully observed look at race, class and envy. It’s funny, too, with the narrative told from the protagonist’s view and divided into short chapters given mischievous titles, such as ‘I might look innocent but I screenshot a lot’ and ‘Viennetta really is the epitome of luxury’. I’m a Fan is fast becoming the book of the summer, gaining Patel her own fans, with pictures of its lilac and red cover being shared online. ‘I didn’t want it to be an enjoyable book,’ she says. ‘I wanted people to be scared of it. What I didn’t expect was to get so many messages from people saying they needed this.’ She laughs. It’s a humid Friday in Bloomsbury and Patel, an assistant director, has been working on a Horrible Histories series. She is wearing a black dress, has a silver nose ring and an armful of silver bangles and is bursting with facts: ‘The Romans invented pie! Pie!’
